Picture of the inside of two Women, 250lbs & 120 lbs

The insides of two women - one 250lb, the other 120lb.

This is a very cool imaging comparison of two females with widely different amounts of body fat. Likely these images were made using a whole-body multi-detector computerized tomography (MDCT). Data is typically acquired in the axial plane in slice thicknesses of about 0.5mm. Using a computer the data is then reformatted into images in the coronal (in this case) and saggital images. Another computer program can then color the images using data from the density (Hounsfield Units, a measurment of X-Ray beam attenuation). This is what makes bone look white and muslce look red. Each has a typical CT density. This can explain why there appears to be fat in the obese woman's brain. These different planes have varying uses depending on the pathology a clinician and/or radiologist is looking for.

More about anatomical planes at:

Anatomical Planes

Other things about the comparison which are interesting are that the bone and muscle mass of the two are roughtly equivalent. Internal organs are roughly the same size. The obese woman appears to have larger organs because they are surrounded by significant amounts of adipose tissue (fat).

Likely due to the excessive weight burden the obese woman has a more "knock-kneed" look or a varus deformity.

Varus Deformity

However you can see this deformity without the weight burden, it is more typical in obese people, paticularly women. This leads to orteoarthritis and is treated conservatively with NSAIDs. The "cure" is weight-loss and/or a knee replacement surgery.

Knee Replacement

One organ that is likely really larger in the obese woman is the heart which has undergone hypertrophy. The heart cannot generate an increase number of muscle cells, but instead the individual muscle fibers all get large to deal with the increased burden. This is not surprising. All that extra fat has blood supply and the heart does have to work harder to pump blood through all that extra tissue. I was once told there is a mile of capillaries in a pound of fat. I never took the time to measure it myself, though...

Cardiac Hypertrophy

You can see a variety of very cool medical imaging reformats at:

Fenestra Image Galleries


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